Azerbaijan, Baku, 28 November / Trend corr. R.Ergun/ The Azerbaijan Fencing Federation (AFF) plans to invite foreign coaches.
"Recently, our country has performed unsuccessfully in fencing. Therefore, the President of the Federation instructed us to invite coaches from foreign countries. We plan to invite one or two specialists in 2009," Yashar Mammadov, the Vice-President of the AFF, told Trend on 28 November.
Nazim Ibrahimov, the chairman of the State Committee for Azerbaijanis Living Abroad, is the President of the AFF.
Mammadov said that they want to invite sportsmen, besides coaches.
"We should invite sportsmen abroad to gain success. However, we know that they are temporary. Therefore, besides foreign sportsmen, we should send local fencing players to international competitions to gain experience. We can develop fencing in the country only through this way," Mammadov said.
Earlier, one of reasons of failures in fencing field was connected to absent of care for local sportsmen, the Vice-President said: "Earlier I asked the Ministry of Sport and Youth to send local fencing players to international competitions, besides foreign sportsmen. Therefore, at present our local sportsmen do have enough experience to perform successfully in international competitions."
The Azerbaijani National fencing team will participate in four international tournaments at the beginning of 2009, Mammadov said.
"This year has finished for us. We have got invitation to take part in four international tournaments to be held in the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Hungary in 2009. It is planned to hold the competitions in February and March in 2009," he said.
Tahir Hakimov is the chief coach of the Azerbaijani National fencing team.
A conference of the International Fencing Federation will be held in Paris in December 2008, the Vice-President said.
The President of the AFF will represent Azerbaijan in the conference.
The correspondent can be contacted at: [email protected]